Rasmussen Only Polls 2/3 of the Race

How do you leave Chris Daggett out of a poll in this race, at this point in the cycle? – – promoted by Rosi

Rasmussen came out with a new poll that has Chris Christie at 47 percent, Corzine at 36 percent.

A new Rasmussen Reports survey of voters in the Garden State finds Christie, a former federal prosecutor, on top 47% to 36%. Those figures reflect a decline of three points for Christie and a single point for Corzine over the past three weeks. Seven percent (7%) now prefer some other candidate, and eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

Amazingly the release doesn’t mention Chris Daggett, the independent candidate from Somerset who has polled as high as 10 percent in some polls. I’m fairly sure that the poll didn’t mention it to the respondents either.

When Daggett is mentioned in other polls the results are significantly closer, whether the polls are done by Republicans (albeit Lonegan supporters) or Demcorats (albeit the Corzine campaign).

Daggett is qualifying for public funds, is polling in double digits in some instances, significantly impacts polls when he is included, and yet Rasmussen and others don’t bother to mention him in the questions.

and with Daggett in the race, he pulls from Christie and Corzine polls much higher so naturally Rasmussen would not include Daggett. He ruins their objective- to make Christie look better.

Ain’t gonna work!

Now the GOP is going after Corzine’s staff’s ethics, saying that they violated an unwritten campaign rule that you don’t target staff when “The went after Michelle”, but no one “went after” Michelle. It was Christie who failed his ethical challenge when he did not disclose their loan, not Michelle.

To quote another poster, “Why can’t Chris Christie take responsibility for his own misdeeds?”

1. Rasmussen polls can be criticized for the fact that they poll using automated polling methodology, meaning that they do not use live people to do the call, but a computer instead. I had a professor at college who told us to never trust a Rasmussen poll, but they are generally within 3% of other standard polls (i.e. Gallup, Roper, Zogby, et cetera.) To say the polls lean GOP is somewhat true, but it could be a fault in their weighting system, not necessary the evils of GOP polling. Again, generally they are pretty accurate.

2. Whether they included Daggert is not that important. We all recognize that he has a slim chance to win, so most of his supporters will be ‘strong supporters’ in a poll – so they will say they are voting for him regardless. Even in the recently released Democracy Corps poll that included him, he only got 10%. If we assume the 7% is for him, than it is within a 3% MOE.

3. However, Corzine is gaining. As reported by PolitickerNJ yesterday, Neighborhood Research shows the race very close, with Corzine leading among likely voters 37% to 35%.

4. GQR (aka Democracy Corps) should be coming out with another poll soon (they say they are going to try to come out with one every two weeks.) So, we can wait and see what that poll says.

I think this is a much closer race than others think. People aren’t talking about favorables or unfavorables so much, which is important. Christie’s favorables have been plummeting, while Corzine’s have remained steady or increased (depending on the poll you look at.) This is a good sign that the Corzine campaign is having an effect on Christie but his campaign is ineffective.

For more info on the race, especially polling coverage, please visit my blog, pollingwonk.blogspot.com. I put up a post yesterday about this race.